at Marcus’s driver and bodyguard waiting near the curb.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Marcus said.
“But if what you’re telling me is true, you’re coming with me, and you’re telling me everything.”
Kojo got into the SUV.
Lila sat in the middle seat, tiny and quiet.
Marcus held the silver flask in one hand and his daughter’s fingers in the other.
He kept his voice as steady as he could.
“Sweetheart, I need you to tell me something.
The drops Serena gives you at night…
how do they feel?”
Lila was silent for a moment.
Then she said, very softly, “They burn.”
Marcus’s heart seemed to stop.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She said brave girls don’t complain,” Lila whispered.
“And she said if I told you, you’d cancel your work and be angry.”
Marcus turned his face toward the window before his daughter could hear the sound that almost came out of him.
Then Lila added, “The tea she packs tastes like coins sometimes.”
Kojo looked down at his hands.
Marcus stared straight ahead, and in a single brutal rush, all the buried details began assembling themselves into a shape he could no longer deny.
Serena insisting she handle every dose herself.
Serena firing the nanny who suggested a second opinion outside her chosen specialists.
Serena telling staff Lila needed calm, darkness, and routine.
Serena always arriving at appointments prepared, composed, sorrowful, admired.
At the hospital, Marcus bypassed the front desk entirely and took Lila to a private diagnostic suite run by Dr.
Emmanuel Mensah, one of the only physicians Marcus trusted as a man, not just as a name on a wall.
Dr.
Mensah listened to almost nothing before taking action.
